A Matter of State
by CelticDaemonWitch
Summary: Because politics cares nothing for true love. One-shot. No happy ending.


A/N: Don't ask me what inspired me to write this. Personal torture, I guess. Because think about it. Politics really wouldn't have allowed Lief and Jasmine to have gotten married, would it? At least, not easily, not after such a time of darkness. Jasmine would not make a good queen for mending friendships and treaties that were lost when the Bone Point Light when out.

So, I created a story where not everything had it's fairy tale ending, and it went all mushy and bittersweet on me. Merr.

Disclaimer: Emily Rodda should be strung up by her toes for even so much as daring to cut Deltora Quest off so soon. I mean, err, Deltora Quest belongs to her and her daughter, down to every last riddle. I just own Ya, and the plot, if you can find one.

Pairing(s): thwarted Lief/Jasmine, very vague hints of Barda/Tira and Jasmine/Emlis, but don't let it put you off.

Warning! I have not read past Isle of the Dead, so do not flame me for what I do not know. And also, I want constructive criticism for doing what I'm about to do, not blindly thrown flames, for they will merely be forwarded to the kitchen to make chicken fajitas.

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A Matter of State

a short story

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When the king of Deltora at last married, the emerald was dull.

She had noticed this, but being from a land across the western sea, she had not understood the meaning of it. It had taken her many years before she truly came to understand and respect the power of the Belt of Deltora, and how crucial it was to the safety of Deltora. She had not wanted to be there at first, but all the high priests of her home country had told her, "Just think of it as being heroic and making a sacrifice to save your country."

All her life, she had been brought up in the delicate dealings of aristrocracy in a country that was floundering but still too traditional to openly cry out for help. It was ridiculous to her, the idea of the king being a regular blacksmith. It was not wrong - she would never call it that - but it did go against everything she understood about royalty. Much time on their soil, which was far richer than hers, would pass before learned and accepted their reasons for doing things.

By the time she made the connection between what the grey-bearded chief of the guards told her and what she had seen on her wedding day, it was too late for her to change her opinion, even if she wanted to. Nor could she be angry.

She could merely be guilty.

She knew that the broken vow the emerald was sensing was not one of the ones she and the king had taken in the strange wedding ceremony that mixed his traditions and hers, even though she knew that her involvement was the reason the vow had been broken in the first place.

But, the years passed, the glow of the emerald returned, and all memory of it ever being any different soon faded from the collective mind. She grew to love her husband, as much as he loved her, and it was not something they were afraid to tell each other. Yet, it was not the rushing, giddy love that caused fools to carve their initials onto trees.

No, their love had grown from hard work and similar minds, like partners thrown together at one task on the whimsy of a greater mind. Which was exactly what they were, with the greater mind being the importance of peace between their nations.

"You may not feel like you are particularly welcome," the king's rhuemy-eyed mother, Sharn, had said to her on the third day of her stay in the palace. That evening, she would be moving to the forge that would eventually become more of a home to her than the stiff, clean manor of her birth. "I daresay it is because you and Lief had not seen each other before the day of your wedding. That was the way it had been in the days before the Deltora fell to the Shadow Lord, and the people fear that upholding an old palace tradition will simply invite evil back into our halls."

Spotting the confused look her little confession had provoked, Sharn had merely smiled and touched the new queen's arm reassuringly. "Do not let it bother you. Give them no reason to dislike you, and they will soon forget their fears."

And so it was.

Ya, as Lief's wife became to be called because of her accent, her generally too agreeable nature, and because her real name could not be pronounced by most Deltoran tongues, tried to be patient and open-minded in everything she did, and win the trust of the people who thought she was a bad omen. As Doom grew older, the need for a blacksmith while Lief was travelling grew as well, until she did the unthinkable and requested to be trained. Many people argued, saying it was too strenuous a trade for a woman, especially one with her upbringing. Lief overrode them, and taught her.

It gave her a true reason to get to know the people of Del, though technically they were her people now that she was queen, and after time, admired them. They told her the stories that Lief had been too self-conscious to tell her himself. Namely, the quest he and two others had gone on to save Deltora from the Shadow Lord, and the further sacrifices made for the good of the country after he became king. It was like the tales of great heroes overcoming impossible odds that had been a part of her childhood.

Only she knew that unlike most of the fairy-tale heroes told to inspire small children, Lief was not all good. After all, there had been a vow he must have broken for the emerald to have been as dull as it was when no evil was present.

The answer to that came in the form of a child. Lief had been in Rithmere, leaving Ya in charge of the forge. It was late evening, and the child that accompanied his parents when they came to pick up an order for a half-dozen fishing hooks was heavy-eyed with sleep. While they discussed the price with each other, he had approached her fearlessly and tugged on her overalls until she knelt down to his height.

"Why did King Lief not marry Jasmine, like he promised he would?"

Those last five words hit Ya like the hammer she used, and it was as if she bent as easily as hot metal. She blurted the first response that came to mind.

"Because Deltora needed him to marry me, instead."

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Now that she knew what to look for, Ya saw the signs everywhere.

The way the emerald dulled the day Lief broke his vow to marry for love.

The naked hopefullness that would appear on his face when a black messanger bird was spotted in the skies.

The quiet distaste he had for the neatly organized, walled gardens Sharn had planted near the palace.

The feeling of failure that Barda expressed when he realized that even his brute force could not ensure a happy ending for the boy he had watched out for since childhood. It had driven him out of Del on its own accord. Last she heard, he had settled in Noradz, married a woman by the name of Tira, and was helping repopulate the recently rebuilt Hira.

There were many other things that Ya did not think she would ever understand. However, she did know that it was her fault, in part, that the legendary friendship between Lief, Barda, and Jasmine was broken. Her heart desperately wished it was otherwise. Although no ships of wars had been launched from Deltoran shores during the reign of the Shadow Lord, the neighboring nations felt the threat. By the end of the sixteen-year seperation, her nation needed the goods Deltora had to trade more than ever, and were willing to do anything to re-establish friendship.

The feeling had been mutual, at any rate, and that was how she became Deltora's queen. A title which rightfully belonged to Jasmine, to whom Ya simply paled in comparison.

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She kept her worries to herself, up until the night that she sat next to the cradle of her newborn son. She stroked the smooth curve of his cheek, but gently of course, for she did not want him to wake after all the trouble she had gone through to get him to sleep. As she sat there, the thought struck her like a thunderbolt - she would not be able to raise her son in peace if she believed that her household would have been happier should she have been another woman.

Most of all, it would be unfair for her son.

Lief was curled up in the armchair before the fire, a dusty book that Josef insisted he read propped open in his lap. This was not unusual. Unconsciously, he was rubbing two fingers along the scar that ran parrellel to his eyebrow, one of a couple that still remained from Lief's near miss with Bede's adulthood mask. Another reminder of the woman who had saved his life, then and many times before.

"Lief." He looked up. "Did Jasmine hate you, for breaking your promise to her?"

His eyebrows went up in surprise. Slowly, he closed the book and set it aside. He was quiet. Then again, Ya had not expected an immediate answer to such a question.

When he did speak, it was not to ask her how she knew so much about what was rightfully just his own memory. His eyes were misted over, like he was not even with her in the room at all. "At first, I think she did. She certainly went out of her way to avoid me, but then, who blames her? I was dishonorable. I had made a promise to her, then expected her to understand why I had to break it. But Jasmine has always understood the birds and the animals and the trees much better than the people. She would have been an impatient courtier, and miserable. Perhaps it is better I did not ask her to test our love and bring her into this unhappiness."

Ya shifted uncomfortably, guilt rising like an ever-increasing bubble in the pit of her stomach. "Where is she now?"

Lief shot her a sharp look, as if just remembering who she was. Then he relaxed into a somewhat rueful smile. "Barda says she has gone to the places that even the goblins do not go, where the walls shine purple and sparkle clear, with a good man by the name of Emlis. I only have Barda's word that she is happy. He is much closer to wherever she may be, in Hira."

It was all very cryptic, and she could not pretend to know what he was talking about. What she did understand was that Jasmine had not been in contact with Lief, perhaps not even since he told her what must be done.

She had tried to apologize once before, the day after her wedding, before she understood why the people of the palace scowled at her. Sharn had hushed her fiercely, with a sharp rap to the nose. She had not acted sorry for something she could not change since then, but it all came tumbling out again now, "Lief, I did not realize things had been that bad. I am sorry we had to ruin everything between you and Jasmine. I -"

She continued on. She barely seemed to register that her husband had stood and was crossing over to her, or that the intense sadness had left his eyes. She only stopped when he began to speak over her, "You do realize that nobody, least of all me, blame you in the slightest? I did not ask to be king, no more than you asked to be in this situation. But our nations asked us to, and that peace treaty is invaluable to both of us. For agreeing to leave everything you loved behind, you should be honored by your people, not made to feel guilty."

Ya looked at him for a long moment. She wanted to kiss him for that, but his eyes were misty again and she did not think that fair, to be kissing him when he was thinking of someone else.

"And I do love you," he added, almost as if he was reminding himself.

"I am not your true love."

"No," he answered truthfully. That place in his heart would always belong to the wild girl with the black bird.

He was the king and he had done what his nation needed him to do. If he had been younger, he might have been tempted to dwell on what could have been. However, his future was standing before him, in the form of the strange woman from across the western sea, and their son, and everybody in Deltora. And he smiled, because that was enough.

Jasmine, at least, was free.

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la fin

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"but I knew you were just like me, with someone dissapointed in you"

((L/J forever!)) 


End file.
